My husband bought a garden gnome for our front yard, and I can’t stress enough the importance of this aesthetic decision.
I grew up in a snobby New England town that was Norman Rockwell-meets-boat shoes, with streets lined with grand colonial homes with cloistered porches and tire swings dangling from the branches of ancient oaks, and gleaming marble countertops and walls in shades of white, beige, and oatmeal.
internal my In my childhood home, one of the bathrooms was painted royal blue with an orange mosaic mirror above the sink that my mother made from bathroom tile. My bedroom was hot pink with layers of gold sponge paint, my mother’s choice. There was barely any space for furniture downstairs, and the room was packed with eclectic artwork, including a pair of three-foot-long beaded lizards and a ladybug sculpture made from recycled scrap metal.
I always cringed a little when friends came over, as if the motley design of our house was proof that our boisterous Italian-Puerto Rican family was out of place in this WASP-ish part of Connecticut.
When I was 15, my parents allowed me to move into the attic, where I was finally able to pick my own paint color. After weeks of deliberation, I chose Calla Lily White.
“how did it “You?” my mother said, breathlessly, as if I’d betrayed her. And maybe I had. Like any teenager, I needed to rebel, except my form of rebellion was to run away from my mother’s garish aesthetic and instead emulate the indistinguishable beige home of my childhood best friend.
The day I left for college, my mother held a can of lime green paint in one hand and waved goodbye with the other, desperately trying to restore my drab teenage bedroom to its original neon glow.
Five years later, Pinterest was founded, and I spent the next decade poring over home-design blogs that promised that with the right soft palette and accessories from Anthropologie, my home could look sophisticated, organized, elegant, and a certain feminine quality.
When my husband and I bought our first home, I was obsessed with making it Pinterest perfect. I hired an interior designer whose work I discovered through a blogger I respected. She studied my Pinterest boards and built a photorealistic model of my home in a matter of weeks. She called it “A cozy, multi-purpose family nest with a European cafe and English pub vibe.”
The result was exactly what I dreamed of: a home full of textured neutrals with just the right amount of color to look “eclectic.” People always comment on the bright, plant-filled entryway and muted botanical wallpaper. While the credit for the choices isn’t mine, I loved how I saw myself living here.
Naturally, when my mom offered to ship some of my childhood items to our new home, I told her to keep it all. I didn’t want my old sea-glass collection or the flower-shaped mosaic mirror we made together when we were 15; the brass arched mirror I ordered from Rejuvenation was on its way. I also relegated the shabby-chic chalkboard my husband used to propose to the back of the closet, because its worn baby blue frame didn’t fit with the vision I had for our home, or for myself.
Then, last December, my beloved grandmother passed away at age 98. She had a very different aesthetic than my mother’s — she was my paternal grandmother — but hers had a cluttered feel that I found outdated. Her porcelain collection spilled over every flat surface, and photos of her grandchildren covered the walls. But she was my favorite person ever. After the funeral, our family visited her at her house, and she handed me a stack of color-coded Post-it notes. “If there’s anything you want, write it on one,” my mother said. “I’ll save it for you.”
To my surprise, I found myself wanting to put post-it notes on everything. Hohoho! The house had a little bell that rang when you entered, a collection of bird mugs, and a kitschy floral oil bottle. Could you fit all her sewing boxes into a suitcase? Could you transplant the wallpaper in her kitchen? The faded yellow flowers feel as much a part of her as her curls of red, unable to seem to have come from anyone’s brain other than her own.
When I returned to Oregon that weekend, I looked around at my over-designed home and felt numb. What on earth would my now 7-year-old daughter want to salvage from here? A generic, mass-produced “oil painting” of a faceless woman from West Elm? A wooden vase that didn’t hold water? And why did I hang so many thrift-store oil paintings of other people’s deceased relatives and not a single family photo? I’d become so hung up on the beauty of platitudes in my home that I’d left out the whole story.
So I called my mom and asked her to send me my sea glass collection. Now I have a shelf of it in my office and it’s inspired me to start collecting again. Very strange print Negroni is my mother’s last name, so it’s Negroni salami. My husband, who always lets me take the lead when it comes to decorating, even bought a garden gnome. “I’ve always wanted one,” he said.
Instead of protesting, I named him Gunter. “Don’t make our yard look like grandma lives in it,” I warned, and we placed Gunter at the end of the retaining wall, under the ferns, at eye level with the kids passing by.
“No, of course not,” he said. “He elegant “Norm.” However, it was striking that Gunther looked a little lonely once he settled down.
“Just one more thing?” Elliot asked.
“Oh, maybe two,” I replied. “And is Granny’s house really that bad anyway?”
Marianne Shembali is a writer who lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire, and she has also written an article for Cup of Jo about being diagnosed with autism as an adult, and her autobiography, It’s a little less likely to breakwill be released this September. Pre-order hereIf you like.
PS A tour of Katherine Newman’s delightfully cluttered home, with 11 readers sharing their cozy nooks in their homes.
(Photo by Carey Shaw/Stocksy)
